Black Moon Rising

by Frankie Rose

  “Absolutely not.”

  I rock my chair back, so it’s balancing on its rear legs. “And why not?”

  “I was told specifically you weren’t to be left alone with her. And even though I’m growing more and more accustomed to your winning personality by the day, I still don’t trust that you have Reza’s best interests at heart. So if I have to go, so does she.” He turns to Reza, getting to his feet, a set look of determination on his face. Reza reaches up and takes hold of him lightly by the wrist, though.

  “I’m going to stay,” she tells him. “I’ll be okay. He’s had plenty of opportunities to kill me and he hasn’t.”

  “I have not.” I wag my index finger at Col, who studiously ignores me.

  “Reza, I know this whole thing is complicated, but being alone with him inside a locked room is an unnecessary risk. We can come back tomorrow.”

  “Might all be dead by tomorrow,” I chip in. “With none of your friends able to see anything in their visions, who knows when the Construct are going to turn up and start setting things on fire?”

  Col is silent for a moment, his eyes locked on Reza. At first glance, he seems calm, but tiny muscles pop and flex in his jawline, betraying his true feelings. “You really do know how to test a person, Beylar.”

  Reza sighs, rubbing at her forehead with her free hand. “I’ll be fine, Col. I promise I can take care of myself. Darius has shown me how to defend myself, and I can keep him out of my head for as long as I need to. If I feel like things are getting out of hand, I’ll send word for you, I promise. Now go, before you miss your meeting and people start hurling rotten food at you.”

  Col inhales, then stands stiffly. He seems trapped by indecision, his hands clenching and unclenching into fists at his sides, and then he turns to face me. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me honestly, if that’s even possible…”

  “I’ve never lied to you, Col. I’ve never needed to.”

  He seems unimpressed by my answer. “Did you kill my mother, Jass Beylar?”

  I almost lose my balance and go toppling backward off the chair. I had no idea what he was going to ask me, but it wasn’t that.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Col says wearily. “She was already going to die. She knew that, and so did I. But dying in your sleep, peacefully, when your time’s up is one thing. Dying with a ceremonial knife in your stomach and your blood leaking out of your body is another thing altogether. It’s no coincidence that she died mere days after you showed up here. You can’t deny that.”

  I can’t think of a single time when someone has accused me of killing someone and I actually haven’t done it. The irony of it is all rather overwhelming. I try not to laugh, because I don’t think that will do my cause many favors. “I didn’t kill her, Col. I swear it to you. I had no reason to hurt her. Aside from being annoyed at her, of course. I know I can be hot-headed, but I don’t tend to expend the energy it takes to kill someone over something so futile.”

  Col’s going to hit me. I think he’s going to try, at least. He stands absolutely still, his feet firmly planted a hip’s width apart, violence all over him. He wants to hurt me. He wants to have found the architect of his mother’s untimely demise, and he wants to make me pay for my crimes. The trouble is…he believes I’m telling the truth, which is making him even madder. If I—the only confirmed cold-blooded murderer in the sub city—didn’t kill Erika, then that poses bigger problems for Col. Crime hasn’t existed here for a long time by all accounts. How could it, when everyone knew who was going to do what to whom and when? But now that the population of Pirius has been sightless for so long, the people here are unaccountable for the crimes, unless they’re stupid enough to get caught red-handed. Col spins around and heads for the door, obviously seething.

  “If you need anything, Reza, make sure you send for me,” he says tightly. He slams the door behind him so hard that a small shower of dirt and sand falls from the ceiling. The particles settle in Reza’s hair and on her eyelashes like a fine ash. She doesn’t dust them away. Angling her head and tilting her chin, there’s a defiant fire burning inside her as she stares me down,

  “Okay. We’re alone. How about we stop with the games,? Why are you asking me about my home planet? And why haven’t you asked me before, inside the dreams?”

  “I tried. You weren’t truly whole, though. Your memory was all over the place. You could never give me a straight answer. None of that matters, Reza. Now, I know the truth. You and I are more alike than I first thought. This connection between us…it’s not some random, accidental thing. It’s far more than that.” She grows paler and paler as I speak, and my hands begin to shake under the table. I’ve had my theories about Reza for a very long time now, but verifying them has turned my head upside down. I don’t want her to see that. I don’t want her to know…

  “We’re not just similar. It’s no miracle that you can resist me where others can’t. Your ability to reach down the tether that connects us in the same way I can, is no fluke. We are the same, Reza. We both hale from the same planet. The cradle of all human life amongst the stars. We are the last remaining true survivors of Earth.”

  NINETEEN

  REZA

  LIGHT

  Earth.

  Nothing more than a myth.

  A legend.

  A story mothers tell their babes to put them to sleep. A story of bountiful life and plentiful pastures. The origin planet for more than ninety percent of all evolved species in the galaxy. Jass can’t be telling the truth. There’s so little chance he and I share any sort of heritage. The chances are a million to one. But now he’s asking me to believe we both came from Earth? I don’t think so.

  “I’m not asking you to believe me,” Jass says. “I’m telling you what I know. I was born on Earth. It was exactly as you described. We were a planet of philosophers, educators and scientists. Every seven years, a blood sun filled the sky, and the people of Earth gathered to discern their fate for the following cycle. As you said, a clear sky meant good luck and fortune. A sky shrouded in cloud meant trouble up ahead. The bronze statue that sat in the center of the coliseum was of a man called Arrotec Ja’En. He was responsible for bringing unity and government to the planet during its last period of unrest. I remember it all vividly. I was a little older than you were when the Construct came to eradicate us from the planet’s surface. I remember the celebrations and the art. I remember the music. I remember the laughter.”

  “Everyone knows Earth’s star exploded. That’s why humans colonized the galaxy. The planet was destroyed millennia ago.”

  “The sun didn’t explode. It cooled,” Jass corrects. “Life became too difficult, resources too short, so people set off to build new lives for themselves on other planets. The sun still shone, though. It still rose and set every day. Plants still grew. Animals still bred. Seventy percent of the planet froze, but life was maintained. Life got better. And thousands of years later, you and I were born.”

  His voice catches in the oddest way. I have to do a double take to try and make sense of his intense expression. His skin has an odd tinge to it, slick with perspiration. It’s as if the memories of this planet he speaks of are making him sick to his stomach. On the other hand, though, I have been sensing his discomfort for the past two days. At first I thought it was a trick, that he was trying to fool me into believing he was ill so I wouldn’t consider him a threat. I saw the moment he realized I could tell what he was feeling just now, though. I saw the moment of shock, and then I felt the tether between us falling immediately slack.

  “You’re not fooling around, are you?” I whisper. “You really believe we came from Earth.”

  “We did.” His voice is hoarse. He opens his mouth to say something else, but no words come out. His eyes take on a vacant, distant haze, but he hasn’t slipped off somewhere into his thoughts. It’s perfectly obvious that he’s struggling to think anything at all, as more and more beads of sweat streak dow
n his forehead. An odd, sickly pink color has started to develop high on his cheeks—definitely not the vibrant flush of pink that healthy people exhibit. Jass’ shoulders tremble a little as he leans forward, resting his elbow on the table in front of him. He clears his throat, then points at me accusingly. “You got off light, Reza. I’d already developed some of my talents when they came for me. If they knew you were like me, the elders would have made sure you received the same education I received. Maybe you would have ended up just like me.” He laughs, and the sound of his amusement is more than a little unhinged.

  Should I get up? Should I call for help? Something doesn’t seem right. It’s as if he could snap at any moment. Out of nowhere, his mental walls suddenly come crashing down. The wave of emotion that hits me is enough to knock the breath from my lungs.

  Pain. Sadness. Regret. Hurt. Hope. Fear.

  Pain.

  Pain.

  Pain.

  Pain.

  I feel the agony ripping through Jass with every persistent thrum of his heart, and it’s almost too much to bear.

  “What wrong with you?” I whisper.

  Jass’ normal sharp, vivid eyes are dark pools of confusion as he tries to get to his feet. “What isn’t wrong with me?” He laughs, his mind reeling, the gates inside his head thrown wide open, and I can feel myself being drawn in, irrevocably pulled forward against my will. He’s a drowning man, scrambling for a purchase on the closest riverbank, and that closest riverbank just so happens to be my sanity. I lurch out of my chair, about to rush for the door, to bolt into the hallway, to call for someone. To call for help? But then I realize I don’t know who really needs the help—me or Jass. I stop in my tracks.

  “You were there the whole time,” he whispers softly. “You were here, right underneath my nose. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t…alone.”

  With that, he topples sideways from his chair, eyes rolling back into his head…completely out cold.

  ******

  “I’ve seen it before. A unique, clever little poison, really. Expensive. Hard to get hold of. Over time, the toxin builds up in your system, stored in fat, in muscle, in bone. Even in your hair. It’ll sit there quite happily and won’t cause an issue, so long as the antidote is administered on a daily basis along with it. If you stop taking the antidote, however, the toxins stored in your cells are gradually released over a period of days, making you sicker and sicker and sicker. It’s astonishing he’s lasted this long to be honest. His levels are just…” Darius shrugs, shaking his head. “It’s remarkable really. I’ve heard of the Construct drip-feeding Light to their most valuable prisoners. When the toxin and the antidote are administered at the same time, the result is quite euphoric for the recipient. They become reliant on the solution. Compliant. Never knowing that it could be used to kill them at any moment. It really was clever of the Construct to harness Jass like this. If he stepped out of line, it would have been easy enough to put him down. I doubt they had any idea his body was this resilient, though.”

  I hug my arms tighter around my body, looking down on Jass’ prone body, still unconscious and sweating under a sheet in Darius’ quarters. “So he’s going to die, then.” My voice is a hollow, uncertain thing.

  “I can’t tell. Probably. I knew he was suffering. Suspected it was this. I offered to help him days ago but he refused me. I’ve been waiting for him to end up here ever since.”

  It’s cold in Darius’ private chamber; a chill breeze has found its way in here somehow, and it snakes its way around my bare ankles and teasing its way down the back of my shirt. I shiver involuntarily, trying to make sense of what I’m being told. “So after all the stress and the fear... After feeling chased and watched for so long… Now that he’s here, he’s just going to die? And that will be the end of it?”

  Darius adjusts the mesh mask he’s still wearing—he must have been out on the planet’s surface when he learned that Jass needed his attention. Fiddling with the ties at either side of his head, he makes quick work of the fastenings and slips the mesh off, tidying it away. “I’ll do my best, but if he’s been hooked on Light for a prolonged period of time, then it’s fairly likely. If that’s the case, you’ll be free, Reza. You’ll be able to leave this place without fear of being followed or hunted. Isn’t that what you’ve been waiting for?”

  Gods, is it ever. There’s not a day that’s passed when I haven’t fantasized about slipping onto a transport and simply vanishing into space. There are so many inhabitable planets now. So many places I could go and start over. I should be jumping for joy, staring at Jass’ chest, waiting for it to stop rising and falling so I can move on with my life already, but that was before. Before I knew about the meetings I hid from myself. Before I knew about the affection and the softness he’s shown me. Before all of the feelings I developed in those dreams came crashing down on me with an incomprehensible force. And, on top of that, I just learned that he and I share common blood. We come from the same place. There’s no doubt he’s wrong about that place being Earth, but his description of the city I was born in was really specific, down to the statue, and how many planets in this galaxy could possibly be affected by a blood sun? The similarities are too great to be discounted.

  I’ve been putting off analyzing Jass’ own feelings—a wall of emotional hurt that I would never have guessed resided inside the man. His pain crowded my head, shouting over the top of his other emotions, but it was his loneliness that hit me hardest. I had no idea he could even experience such a thing. I expected a desert wasteland inside of Jass Beylar, much like the surface of Pirius, but instead what I found was a landscape of anguish and torment.

  “You don’t want him to die,” Darius says. He wipes Jass’ face with a damp cloth with the same care and compassion he has shown countless others. There’s no judgment in his voice. No tone or inflection that might lead me to believe he thinks I’m crazy. I feel crazy, though, because he’s right. I don’t want Jass to die. If I’d learned this had happened to him weeks ago, I would have been crowing from the dune tops, cartwheeling all over the place. I would have felt like I’d been set free. But now, after witnessing the kaleidoscope of turmoil inside the man who has spent so long searching for me? Along with everything else I’m feeling right now? I just don’t know what I’m supposed to think.

  “You don’t need to be ashamed,” Darius tells me. “Jass has a reputation. A black cloud follows him wherever he goes. That doesn’t mean you have to wish death upon him.” He raises Jass’ left arm, ties a length of material around it, then flicks at a vial of clear liquid he’s drawn into a syringe. My stomach balks as I watch the sharp needle disappear into Jass’ arm. I’m not normally queasy, but there’s something unsettling about watching the metal pierce his skin.

  “It seems like a betrayal to feel that way,” I say in a hushed voice. “Like I’m betraying all the people who’ve died at his hands.”

  Darius sighs heavily, laying Jass’ arm gently down onto the cot. He huffs again, apparently struggling with whatever it is he wants to say next. After a painful moment of silence, punctuated by Jass’ labored breathing, he sits himself down on the edge of the cot and laces his long fingers together, fixing me with a penetrating look. “The Light the Construct have been feeding Jass with has numerous side affects, Reza. Euphoria. Shortened temper. Heightened senses. And a complete disregard for others and their wellbeing. The solution acts as a dampener for nearly all emotion. I’m the last person to make excuses for such a notorious member of the Construct, but there’s a very real chance Jass wouldn’t have followed the orders he was given if he wasn’t dosed up to the eyeballs on that stuff. That depends entirely on the person he was before he became addicted to the toxin, of course. But I like to think most creatures in this galaxy are good at their core. They deserve the benefit of the doubt. Convincing other members of the Commonwealth that Jass deserves a second shot isn’t going to be easy, though. Jass would have to be clean of the Light. And not only that. He would have to
actually want a second chance.”

  Such incendiary words. I would never have been brave enough to say them out loud, but I have been wondering what will happen once the citizens of the sub city finally discover who they have living amongst them. What will become of Jass? Who will he be once the toxins the Construct has been pumping him with are cleared from his system? His mind might be clearer, perhaps the full extent of his emotions will return to him over time, but there really is no guarantee any of that will change who he is. Who he’s been for such a long time now. He’ll still be as strong. Still be able to reach into people’s minds and control them at his own leisure. I look down at him lying on the cot, his hair a wild, dark halo spread out around his head in thick waves, his eyelids flickering gently as he dreams, and a fog of doubt clouds my mind. What’s going on his head right now, as his body desperately fights to heal itself? Is he dreaming of fields of bodies, slaughtered and decaying at his feet? Whole planets bending the knee, worshiping him as a god? Or is he dreaming of something else? Something far less sinister. I can’t help it. Can’t stop myself from wondering it. Is he dreaming of me?

  TWENTY

  JASS

  INFERNO

  Even the dark hurts my eyes. I’ve endured the bottomless depths of oblivion before, but then I felt nothing. Here, trapped within my own head, unable to move or speak, the very nothingness itself causes me pain. I float on a sea of emptiness, untethered and cast out. Every time I struggle to open up my lungs and fill them with oxygen, I curse myself for succumbing to my desperate need to breathe. If I could avoid the agony of simply existing at this point, I would do it. I would die, and I’d be damned grateful to shuffle loose this mortal coil. It would be better than suffering through this damned void, where nothing seems to work except my nerve endings and the corresponding pain receptors in my brain. Oh, and my ears. My ears seem to be working just fine, which is both a blessing and a curse.